Thinking to migrate to Vista X64(64 bit system) from XP 32 bit

[AVGWarhawk]

I just got Vista 64. I like it a lot. I run SH4 and COD WaW without any issues at all. If the game you are loading is Vista ready, it will load to your MS Games Folder automatically. If your game is not Vista ready such as SH4, just navigate to install it in the MS Games fold. Works for me. As far as others stating Vista will run the game in 32 bit, so why upgrade? Well, you get the best of both. You can run the 32 bit games and applications. You can also run the 64 bit games and applications. As far as RAM, I have 4 gig of DDR2 PC2-6400. Phenom X4 9850 and EVGA 9800 GT vid card. My games run full tilt and flawlessly. Memory optimizations is excellent. Once the game is loaded, my hard drive does not work at all. Overall, I'm very pleased with Vista 64. Now some say Windows 7 is just about out the door. I think it will be out the door in about 6 months to year. Give some time for the bugs and a service pack. You know, the usual. As I understand it, you can upgrade to Windows 7 right off Vista where XP will not be upgradable straight to Windows 7.

[Fincuan]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

As I understand it, you can upgrade to Windows 7 right off Vista where XP will no be upgradable.

The Win 7 beta installer offered a possibility to upgrade from XP, but no idea how or if it would have worked since I opted for a completely new installation. I figured I'd better start from scrath than to bring all the crap from the previous OS

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Fincuan

The Win 7 beta installer offered a possibility to upgrade from XP, but no idea how or if it would have worked since I opted for a completely new installation. I figured I'd better start from scrath than to bring all the crap from the previous OS

I think you can only partition the drive to load the beta if you have XP. Yes, I agree, start fresh with the install of Windows 7.

[CaptainHaplo]

I am typing this on a vista ultimate 64 bit box - with 2Gigs of ram.... Thats right - 2 Gigs. And guess what - it runs like a champ. Its faster than XP with 2 Gigs. Of course - thats after I have tweaked the daylights out of it. Yes - I will be upgrading (though I might also stay with 7 even after that depending).

There are a few games/apps I have struggled with on it - but that has been very limited. In fact - I have had 4 programs give me issues - one of which was a very old version of norton systemworks. **2003 edition - it was a test**

The other three - Brothers in Arms RtH30 and Brothers in Arms EIB - both of which had to be INSTALLED in compatibility mode. However, they run fine. Just the setup choked. The third is a application from work that I knew was going to have issues as both the installer and app are both 16 bit. That one - just wont run on any 64 bit OS by MS.

64 Bit offers more than just more addressable memory. Thats the easy, and accurate answer that it does, and thats a big plus, but the reworked tcp-ip stack alone made it worthwhile for me. There are lots of things under the hood that contribute to making vista 64 a solid OS. Yes - you still hear horror stories about drivers, etc -but again - that time has passed.

The fact is - change is hard. And some people remember the jump from 98 or 2k to xp and don't look forward to that experience again. Not saying Subman is among them - but most of the resistance you see out there today is due to the age old human trait of - we don't like change.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

The fact is - change is hard. And some people remember the jump from 98 or 2k to xp and don't look forward to that experience again. Not saying Subman is among them - but most of the resistance you see out there today is due to the age old human trait of - we don't like change.

Change is not hard, if windows 7 were priced at 0 $ I'd be first in line to use it and do away with xp. Fact is, Microsoft prices its OS very high, and to change there has to be something worth changeing. If there isn't it doesn't matter how shiny the new OS is, people will stick to what they have. A have a lot of software that cost me a lot of money and it simply won't run on a 64 bit os because of certain copy protection techniques. Do you think I'll go spend 400 $ for windows 7 ultimate for what ? To use 4 GB of ram ? To have a more stable computer ? My computer hasn't blu screened in over 2 years and it runs beautifully xp. And it runs all the programs I need. Microsoft creates artificial needs so people are swayed in upgrading something that most don't even need. More power to MS and less power to its customers. As for me I upgrade on my timetable not on MS timetable. If that makes me resistant to change then so be it. :p

Ps: I change and try very often linux distributions and bsd systems.
So I don't fear change. I hate change for the sake of it and moreso when it costs a lot of money for nothing.

[AVGWarhawk]

In a way you are correct, MS direct which way, you the consumer, should go. But, our hands are kind of tied. It is move up or sit and wait for the old OS to loose support from MS. This goes hand in hand with third party developers. They need to move up or dry up in the old pond. I had attempted to stick with Windows 98 until it's last breath when I could not get an old update. That was the last straw and was forced to move away from my wonderful stable Windows 98. Along came XP. Marvelous it was. Updates galor. Game run like a champ. Some more freedom with files. We were the test bed for XP 64. Basically, we have been beta testers all along for MS. So we get SP1,2 and 3 downloaded. You get the picture. Along comes Vista with things we have been asking for over the years. Here we have it. An OS with more things you can do. You can do them faster. RAM is utilized quite well. The third party developers have caught up. Drivers are not an issue. With exception of a few old games, Vista will run just about all of them. The test bed for Vista over the last 2 years is complete and the new bed is made now for Windows 7. Sooner or later, all will be forced to move up. It is the nature of this habit we call computers. I like Vista and have no qualms at all. Windows 7 will come along and Vista will die a slow death like all the other OS in the past. But, I really think MS should offer up a darn fine price for Windows 7 for all the headaches MS creates by distributing a bug riddled OS called Vista. Just like the OS we have seen in the past where we were ultimately the beta testers. Such is the circle of life concerning MS.

So, we assimulate with the Borg and all is well.

[XLjedi]

I think by "change is hard" he perhaps was suggesting that it takes awhile for the various hardware companies to put out bullet-proof drivers. I don't think he meant it was hard for the users to change to the new OS (aside from being frustrated that the drivers aren't available or don't work).

I'm runnin 64 bit with an AMD Athlon 64fx proc on an Asus A8NSLI moboard with 2 gigs of ram and dual nVidia 9600GT's and a couple 10k RPM Raptor drives in RAID array.

Just about a year ago I invested about $300 in the dual GPU's and it was like breathing new life back into a flatlined patient. The moboard and proc are like 4 or 5 years old now and I think I can run fine with em for at least another year!

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by goldorak

Subman1, win32 applications on windows 64 (xp 64 or vista 64) are not emulated.
They run on top of the wow subsystem which takes care of converting the api 32 calls to api 64 calls. Nothing more, nothing less. So the impact on performance is very mild, its nothing like running the application on a virtual machine or having it emulated....

Read my post again. You are somewhat wrong. There must be a 'sandbox' because most 32-bit apps must be protected from additional memory available to the system or they will crash. Read up on it.

-S

[CaptainHaplo]

In a way - your both right. Wowexec changes the calls and does protect memory allocation - in essence it IS emulation - but only on a very small scale. 32 bit OS's do the same for 16 bit apps. No big deal.

The key here is you get more thru 64 bit than just "extra addressable memory".

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

In a way - your both right. Wowexec changes the calls and does protect memory allocation - in essence it IS emulation - but only on a very small scale. 32 bit OS's do the same for 16 bit apps. No big deal.

The key here is you get more thru 64 bit than just "extra addressable memory".

Again, you are you are both mildly right, except you don't get much more than just more addressable memory from a hybrid CPU.

Performance increases are non-existent and performance decreases are the norm, though as pointed out, it is a mild decrease that is probably not noticeable.

-S

[Castout]

Darn Vista 64 bit costs more than 400 bucks.

I'm better off migrating to XP 64 bit instead.

[Castout]

Originally Posted by goldorak

Change is not hard, if windows 7 were priced at 0 $ I'd be first in line to use it and do away with xp. Fact is, Microsoft prices its OS very high, and to change there has to be something worth changeing. If there isn't it doesn't matter how shiny the new OS is, people will stick to what they have. A have a lot of software that cost me a lot of money and it simply won't run on a 64 bit os because of certain copy protection techniques. Do you think I'll go spend 400 $ for windows 7 ultimate for what ? To use 4 GB of ram ? To have a more stable computer ? My computer hasn't blu screened in over 2 years and it runs beautifully xp. And it runs all the programs I need. Microsoft creates artificial needs so people are swayed in upgrading something that most don't even need. More power to MS and less power to its customers. As for me I upgrade on my timetable not on MS timetable. If that makes me resistant to change then so be it. :p

Ps: I change and try very often linux distributions and bsd systems.
So I don't fear change. I hate change for the sake of it and moreso when it costs a lot of money for nothing.

Yea my sentiment exactly. I've been reading Vista reviews and it seems not to offer enough features to make it worthwhile to switch from XP.

So I've decided not to get Vista. Well except Vista 64 bit but that one is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy overpriced.

[Castout]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Why would you want to downgrade your system? Vista is not a step forwards.

And why all the hype around 64-bit? It still has to run all your software in 32 bit. The type of CPU you have is a hybrid, not a true 64 bit CPU. It is only capable of 64-bit calls. The short answer is, the only thing 64-bit will give you is access to more RAM, and even this has been fixed for 32-bit. There could be a slight performance increase on the probably 2 x 64-bit apps out there, IE being one of them, but since programs like flash are not made for 64-bit, you'll still have to use the 32-bit version 98% of the time. There may actually be a performance decrease with 64-bit since 99.9% of your apps need to run in what is called 32 bit emulation mode (It is a 64-bit OS after all so you need to run your 32-bit programs in a sandbox, though many users may not notice this is happening outside of slightly decreased performance).

I could go on all day but the short answer is, 64-bit windows is still a novelty and one that might make your apps run slower since they need to be emulated. So, unless you want to run 20GB of RAM for some application (some vaporware application that you don't own yet) that you have, it is not worth it.

I've spoken my 2 cents.

-S

Hmm my reason is that my PC had been hacked into. Though my firewall detected it as being connected to two different networks, out of stupid ignorance I forgot to delete the mal-network and this caused some files in my system to become corrupted and I was unable to use my internet for a couple of days until I reinstalled everything again.

I've heard that 64 bit system is safer. 32 bit applications in 64 bit system actually run on protected memory and thus is more secured.

I'm pretty dumb about computer and stuffs but I know that 64 bit system is more secured and is the future of things to come. And I just happen to have a rig that can fully support it so I thought well why didn't I go the whole distant and made use of it(64 bit). So in part curiosity got me into it too.

[goldorak]

Originally Posted by Castout

Darn Vista 64 bit costs more than 400 bucks.

I'm better off migrating to XP 64 bit instead.

Be aware that XP 64 is even less supported than Vista 64.
At least with consumer level hardware.

[Castout]

Originally Posted by goldorak

Be aware that XP 64 is even less supported than Vista 64.
At least with consumer level hardware.

Hmm it's much more affordable.

I suspect Microsoft developed XP 64 bit as a sort of test bed for Vista 64 bit. That explains the lack of support. But so far I've been able to find drivers for XP 64 bit just fine.

And whatever runs on Vista 64 bit seems to be running in XP 64 bit as well.

Thanks for the warning. The reviews so far have been good even better than Vista 64 bit.